Review Corner

Category: Jazz

  • Magnus Lindgren: Stockholm Underground

    You’re a detective in New York in the 70s and the captain’s asked you to investigate some cats in the hood who’ve been causing trouble. He sends you to Magnus’s, the hip club where the black dudes and white cats hang out. You walk in; it’s smoky with the smell of reefer, lots of people…

  • Marius Neset: Circle of Chimes

    This is muscular and modern jazz that skirts round the edges of jazz, prog, improv and classical, with added tubular bells. There’s some fearsome sax playing, too. Writing on his website, Neset says tubular bells were the idea for the album, and it opens with them sounding like distant church bells. It’s not so much…

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    Chris Gekker: Ghost Dialogues, Music for Trumpet

    Gekker is professor of trumpet at the University of Maryland School of Music. He has appeared as a soloist throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe, and can be heard as such on more than 30 recordings. He’s also played with Sting. He’s good. This CD features modern trumpet music, with work from composers Carson…

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    Jocee: Just Love

    Jocee is living the dream whether or not anyone buys this. She already makes a living with a residency at the Blues Kitchen in Shoreditch, ran an acoustic music night for emerging artists with Pixie Lott for three years and is a member of the Urban Voices Collective. She has worked with Paloma Faith at…

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    Hackney Colliery Band: Live

    Whenever we’re down in the dumps in the Review Corner, we often play Rock With the Hot 8, by The Hot 8 Brass Band, a New Orleans outfit that blend hip-hop, jazz and funk. It’s not brass as you might expect if you’re a fan of Foden’s Band, and nor are there eight of them,…

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    Hibla Gerzmava: Opera Jazz Blues

    This CD is a programme of work it probably never crossed your mind you’d need: soprano Gerzmava sings classical, jazz and blues. This doesn’t mean she stops being a soprano and sings jazz in husky tones, it means you get jazz/blues (and classical) piano accompanying what is mostly operatic singing. Track one is a delicate…

  • Corrie Dick: Impossible Things

    Corrie Dick is a drummer (and composer), but this album is so varied we thought (before we checked) that he was a pianist. Knowing he’s a drummer explains the complexity of the album but its subtlety and nuance suggests something other than someone who likes hitting things, though it’s unassuming, reflecting the fact that drummers…

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    Phish: Farmhouse, Junta, Billy Breathes

    In a week where we’re low on new releases, we thought we’d review some old albums from a band you’ve possibly never heard of — American jam-band Phish. Anyone who follows US culture will have come across Phish, who are loved in the States but largely unknown over here. We asked A&A Music, and its…

  • Alison Rayner: Quintet A Magic Life

    This modern jazz album is one about which you could say very little or write an essay. On one level, it’s easy listening, and you can play it as pleasant background music; given the musicianship of the players, that’s like using a Lamborghini to nip to Tesco. Jazz players of this calibre make it all…

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    Michael Bublé: Nobody But Me

    Nobody But Me It’s Christmas! It must be time for the Bublé to release an album. Thankfully it’s not a re-release of Christmas, though having released it as a normal CD, then deluxe, super deluxe, super deluxe with bells, super super deluxe with whistles and tassels and super dooper deluxe best-ever honest (remastered) with free…